


The Beginning, the Middle, the End, and Everything in Between

by Dahlia_Moon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV), Pushing Daisies
Genre: But I don't care, Gen, crossovers, kind of meta-ish?, the Middleman also makes a quick appearance, this will eventually get jossed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:09:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dahlia_Moon/pseuds/Dahlia_Moon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were many important questions in the world. </p><p>Like, why are we here? What happens to someone when they die? What's the meaning of life? Is there life beyond our pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan called it? </p><p>This does not attempt to answer any of the above questions, unfortunately, except for the most important one: Who wrote Henry's book?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beginning, the Middle, the End, and Everything in Between

_I don't know what I'm writing,_

_but I write and write in journals without lines,_

_so that I can spin the pages any way I want._

_\-  Billy Merrell_

* * *

At this very moment in the town of Coeur d'Coeurs, while Charlotte Charles, the girl known as Chuck, Olive Snook, Ned the Pie Maker who had the magic touch, and Emerson Cod the private investigator were all snug in bed, the Narrator took up his quill. He took up his quill once more to work on the biggest project of his imagination since young Ned was nine years, twenty-seven weeks, six days and three minutes old.

Likewise, this next writing project of his would involve a young protagonist. It would actually involve a lot more protagonists than _Pushing Daisies_ had and a lot more recurring characters and it would not be moving pictures involving murder and the dead; that is to say - he should be more precise because specificity is the soul of all good communication, as one character called the Middleman would later put it - it would not  _only_ involve murder and the dead, but pretty much everything under the scope of the human imagination. There would be true love, sword fights, quests, adventures, journeys, redemption, stories about family and friends, good, and evil, and stories where the lines between both sides would be blurred. Not that _Pushing Daisies_ was not often at times a story about true love, family (both the one you were born into and the one you made with like-minded people who gravitated toward each other), adventures, and journeys - after all, most stories share a theme or two with one another - but, oh, the story that would become Henry's and the Savior's would be so much bigger and heftier in scope than  _Pushing Daisies_.

The Narrator would love _Pushing Daisies_ until the end of time, but there was always the worry in the back of his mind that the story would not be in the moving pictures for as long as it deserved and he'd have to move on to something else. It'd be okay though; there would be no great need to feel too sad for him. He would have lots more stories to work on, narrate if his specialties were called for. There was a plethora of stories still out there in the ether that needed to be told.

While his current job was mainly to narrate the lives of Charlotte Charles, Olive Snook, Ned the Pie Maker, and Emerson Cod in his big book, The Codex of Many Stories, this other job concerning young Henry Mills and the town in Maine called Storybrooke was just as an important story to tell as _Pushing Daisies_ currently was. After all, the population of Coeur d'Coeurs had to sleep _sometime_ , and the Narrator had the task in front him now to write the book of fairy tales that would find the boy named Henry Mills, who was, as of this moment, seven years, eleven weeks, four days, five hours and fifty-eight minutes old. Henry did not know what awaited him when he turned eleven years, forty-five weeks, seven days, ten hours and thirty-eight minutes old.

The Narrator didn't really need sleep, so he weaved the stories of the fairy tale characters we had all ever known who had all of their happiness taken away from them and trapped them between two worlds. He spun the stories late into the night and early morning, everything he knew and everything that he remembered and would know to come to pass. He wrote everything down because it was his job. But, also, and most importantly, because he had come to love the characters as he loved his characters from _Pushing Daisies_  and wanted them freed from the curse.

It was only from his quill, you gentle reader must understand, that the fables could be set free, running from his imagination to his quill, all the knowledge that he acquired about the old fairy tales. Because these were the characters that were immortal; they lived for centuries and all the eras and epochs. As long as the world had humans to inhabit them, the fairy tale characters would live on. They might not become the same reincarnation as the Narrator knew them now in this era, but after this era folded and collapsed into a new one, and the current generation died and gave way to a new one, the fairy tale characters would be reincarnated once more, in different, but no less important, ways. And another Narrator would have the job of telling it then. But, for now, as with all things, it was his job to make sure the legacy of the old Narrator since fairy tales first appeared in print would be upheld with the most honor they deserved.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] The Beginning, the Middle, the End, and Everything in Between](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3678339) by [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid)




End file.
